PC Game Fun Time

Good news for all the Fallout lovers out there!  Bethesda Softworks has announced their intention to release a Fallout 3 modding kit / editor, appropriately named the Garden of Eden Creation Kit (G.E.C.K) in December.  Also mentioned in the press release are three pieces of downloadable content scheduled for the next few months.

While I am personally not too excited about downloadable content, the news of a proper modding kit on the horizon has me very happy indeed.  Given the game’s very strong sales numbers, it seems almost certain that we will be seeing some excellent work from the modding community.

It occurs to me reading about this that there may be a somewhat hidden agenda behind the delay in the release of the mod tools for Fallout 3.  While it is fairly common for modding kits to lag behind the releases of their respective games, Bethesda has traditionally been pretty on the ball in terms of getting modding support out there early.  Could there be a political motivation behind the delay?

Simply put, having widespread modding support is now a potential liability for game publishers.  There are all sorts of possibilities for offensive material to be added to a game like Fallout 3.  Even if the shipped product did not contain the content, it is not hard to imagine a mainstream media outlet getting hold of a Fallout 3 child killing mod and creating a “Hot Coffee” style incident.  By December (Fallout 3 was released on October 28), Bethesda is probably betting that the attention will have reached a low enough level for a relatively safe release of the modding kit.

If this reasoning did play a factor in Bethesda’s decision to delay the modding kit, one can hardly blame them.  The last thing any game developer or publisher needs is a potentially very expensive lawsuit.  In any event, I look forward to seeing some high quality custom content for Fallout 3.

It has been a while since I posted my “final” review of Fallout 3 indicating my disappointment with the game’s ending.  In that time, I have started a new character and brought him up currently about level 10.

I wish I could find enough ammo to use this gun more often.

Let me just start by saying the second playthrough has been better than the first.  It turns out that on my first time playing, I barely scratched the surface of all the weird and awesome sidequests available.  Since I had scarcely explored the northern half of the map on my first time through, I promptly headed off North on my second attempt.  Almost immediately, I encountered several brilliantly crafted (and also totally bizarre) sidequests.

I won’t spoil the surprise for those of you who are still planning on putting some time into the game.  Suffice it to say, however, that Fallout 3 is a huge game, and sticking even roughly to the main quest throughout will cause you to miss all but a tiny fraction of it.

My second play experience has also proven quite a bit harder than my first.  Instead of pumping tons of points into small guns and turning myself into a sniper rifle wielding head exploding machine, I have been mostly focusing on big guns and energy weapons.  Unfortunately, at this stage of the game I have found almost no energy weapons, and big gun ammo has been scarce.  So, I have been forced to rely on my assault rifle a fair amount.

This has also led me to making some use of explosives and the game’s homemade weapons system.  While it is not particularly robust (there are only a relatively small number of predefined schematics to be found in the game world) it is still a lot of fun.  The homemade bottlecap mines, for example, are incredibly effective, almost ridiculously so.  While your mileage may vary depending on how you distribute your skill points, for me they do about 5 times as much damage as the standard frag mines.

The weapon crafting system seems like an area that should be ripe for modding.  Unfortunately, mum is still the word from Bethesda on the release of an editor like we had for Oblivion.  While smaller mods have sprung up anyway, without a dedicated toolset the chances of a large, successful modding community sustaining itself are pretty slim.

Even without mods, Fallout 3 is offering a lot of replay value rarely found in a game.  But with a large modding community, Fallout 3 could be so much more.  I continue to hope for an official release of an editor from Bethesda.  I am pretty optimistic that this will happen.  I just hope it comes soon enough that there is still interest in using it.

After many an hour and quite a few posts on this blog, I have finally finished the main quest of Fallout 3.  Now, I feel like I finally know what everyone was complaining about.  The main quest ended up being quite short and pretty unsatisfying.  I won’t spoil the game for those who have yet to complete it, but suffice it to say that the game’s ending is not particularly epic.

It really leaves me wondering why Bethesda would spend so much time crafting a wonderful, immersive gameplay experience, but then leave the main quest so lacking.  While I personally put in a ton of hours on other aspects of the game and thoroughly enjoyed it, anyone who just blazed through the main quest will undoubtedly be left disappointed.

Be that as it may, I fully intend to go back into the game with a new character.  My first play through was by and large as a goodie-two shoes, and it will be fun to try out some of the more evil roleplaying options.  Also, I am very hopeful that Fallout 3 will inspire some good mods.  Unfortunately, it remains to be seen whether an official editor will be released.  If Bethesda does get their act together and release a proper editor, there will undoubtedly be a great deal of gameplay left in Fallout 3, both for myself and many others.

In light of the large amount of feedback from our first Fallout 3 related post, I think it is a good idea if we do another one.  This will also give me a chance to respond to those who charged I was being overly negative.

Don’t get me wrong, I think that Fallout 3 has great potential, and I don’t think any of the things mentioned in my previous post are going to be major concerns once we are actually playing the game.  Also, I am not one of the Fallout 1 & 2 diehards who think that any change in the formula of the originals or any influence from other games (especially Oblivion) is a bad thing.

In fact, I quite liked Oblivion, and played it quite extensively.  It did, however, have some flaws that ultimately limited the long term replay value of the game.  So, my hope for Fallout 3 is that it marries the best aspects of the previous Fallout games and The Elder Scrolls series, and avoids the worst.

Read the rest of this entry »

Much ado has been made recently over the long anticipated post apocalyptic role playing game, Fallout 3.  After all, it has been just over ten years since the release of the last game in the series, Fallout 2.  (This is not counting Fallout Tactics, which was not a roleplaying game as such.)

Fan expectations for such a project are inevitably high.  Just as inevitably, fan complaints have been legion, especially from the die-hards who remember the original games with a fond sense of nostalgia.  There has been a great deal of worrying from these types that the new Fallout, which is being developed by Bethesda rather than the original developer Black Isle, will lack that special magic that made the first two games great.

Undeniably, a part of that magic was the mature nature of the games.  The original Fallout series featured many adult topics, including sex, prostitution, drugs, and drug addiction.  Unfortunately, times change, and many of these topics are no longer considered fit for video games, at least if they want to avoid the instant death sentence that is an “Adults Only” (AO) rating.  Games with this rating will not be sold in most brick and mortar stores, which means there is little hope of AO games achieving the kind of sales that less harshly rated titles often do.

Read the rest of this entry »